Artist's statement by julia de ruyter

What is Information?

Inspired by Michael Buckland’s notions of “information-as-thing” (as tangible items that are experienced or engaged with), “information-as-process” (of informing or being informed), and “information-as-knowledge” (as an intangible representation; something that individuals cannot directly engage with), this poster explores the ways in which individuals conceptualize “Information.” The images and symbols were extracted from a visual data set, and then categorized according to Buckland’s theory.

Forming a network around these images are the words that are used to describe them in the corresponding textual data set. These metaphorical relationships are presented in a knowledge framework to reflect the individual cognitive processes required for making information meaningful. This is a representative of the cognitivist metatheory, whereby individuals assign meaning to information that was previously uninformative and foreign by forming cognitive links between words and images. The design of my project is reflective of the thought processes that arise when one question: what is information?

This internalized process of meaning-making is not the only way individuals interpret “information”. Perceptions of “information” may also be influenced by the social worlds in which individuals operate. These impacts on knowledge structures, indicated with arrows flowing into the brain, are representative of sociocognitivist and constructivist metatheories.